


Life and its Problems

by wyvernisgod



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, but I seriously started shipping it??, idk man, this was all just kinda for kicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernisgod/pseuds/wyvernisgod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little oneshot I wrote for a friend! Eridan comes back to life, and meets this girl who reminds him of someone he used to love...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life and its Problems

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading, and if you like it, please leave a comment or a kudos or something! (I hope I got the character's personalities)

He had heard the rumors the instant they started, but he chose to ignore them. He heard rumors all the time, but this one seemed to stick more than any other. _The game had been won,_ the others were whispering, hardly daring to hope it was true. _English was gone, and the ring of life had been duplicated by some brilliant alchemization so that everyone who had died could be alive again, on the planet where the final battle had taken place._ It was the standard good-beats-evil-happy-ending stuff, and Eridan didn’t pay any mind to it, thinking it just hopeful rumors until Kanaya, of all trolls, showed up with one of the rings for him. 

Eridan tried not to show any emotion when Kanaya gave him the ring. He took it with an almost bored “Thanks”, but his eyes had met hers as he had said it, and when he searched them he found nothing but cold disdain there.   
She turned and walked away without another word, and he couldn’t stop the words that came out of his mouth, almost pleading, but mostly loud with anger. “Don’t you fuckin’ look at me like that! I did wwhat I thought wwas right! I wwas tryin’ to savve…” But his voice failed him, cracking here, and he trailed off. 

Kanaya didn’t even turn as she called back to him, “I couldn’t care less about what you were trying to do, Ampora. You’re not worth wasting time thinking about.”

And then she disappeared, and Eridan was alone with the ring and his thoughts. For a while, he just sat and held it and cursed. Cursed his lusus, cursed the landdwellers, cursed his friends and his enemies and everyone in between. He cursed himself, too, for not helping during the game, not making a move on Feferi when he had the chance, not reigning himself in when Sollux had demanded a duel--

But eventually he ran out of words and colorful combinations and simply sat, moving the ring from hand to hand before finally slipping it on. And with a ‘pop!’ he came back into reality, landing not too softly onto grass that overlooked a vast lake of lava. Blinking, he stood, wobbling a little at the weight of his body (everything had been so much lighter when he was a ghost), and turned in a circle, trying to find something (or someone) who looked familiar.   
Not far away was a collection of the Alternian trolls, who also seemed dazed and disoriented. Equius was there, as were Nepeta, Karkat, Terezi, Vriska and Tavros. Feferi, Sollux or Kanaya were nowhere to be found, which Eridan was thankful for. Nepeta took exactly three seconds before crying out and running towards Equius, who caught her as she leapt on him and swung her up in the air, both of them laughing and crying at the same time.

Eridan got a lump in his throat just watching it (not because he wanted that, no way. It was just too mushy for him), and he turned away, facing the blistering heat of the lava instead. There was a gigantic statue that had toppled over into the lava, and though it was slowly disintegrating, it was still a path across the lake, and since Eridan really didn’t want to deal with all that happy touchy feely bullshit, he hoisted himself up onto the stone and started across. It was broken into sections that he sometimes had to leap across, but it wasn’t too hard- the gaps were pretty close. There were parts when the stone had crumbled beneath his boots, hissing as it touched the molten magma below, but Eridan wasn’t scared of falling. He had been through too much to be scared of death now.   
The other side of the lake wasn’t much better- there were a bunch of reptiles chattering excitedly around a small group of humans, who were laughing and hugging as the annoying things climbed all over them. Eridan huffed, angling away from them, and headed towards the small white hive-looking place that was situated close to the volcano. It took a bit to climb, with no stairs and barely any handholds, but when he got to the top the solitude made it worth it. 

He brushed off his clothes, grumbling at the dirt, and sat on the edge of the open roof, legs dangling high above the lava below. This was where he belonged anyway, right? Alone and unwanted, the scourge of the game. Along with Gamzee, but he had no idea where that clown-fucking stoner was, and he didn’t want to know.   
The whole game had been a disaster- from his and Fef’s relationship disintegrating to his land being filled with overpowered angels to the battle with Sollux to the solitude and sulking of the dream bubbles. But, looking back on that, Eridan had to admit that as much as he wanted to blame it all on everyone else (after all, he did have some dumbasses for teammates), he was the one that was mostly at fault. It was his ranting and raving that had pushed Fef away. It had been his cruel and unlikeable demeanor that had caused his teammates to be cold to him. The angels—now that he looked at it, they had probably been his consorts the whole time, but he had been too damn angry to realize that. It had been his trying to join Jack Noir that had caused the fight in the first place, and it had been his temper that had ended it. His shoulders sagged as he went through it in his head, staring both at the opposite side of the lake and then down to his hands, twisting his rings and the ring around his fingers.  
He had no idea how long he sat like that, watching the small blobs that must have been his teammates move around and converge and, eventually, split apart and disappear beyond his view. When the sun finally set, there was no one left on the other side of the lake. 

No one had come looking for him. He doubted anyone cared at all if he was alive again or not.

“And wwhy the fuck should I care? None of them wwere my friends anywway.” His indignant but slightly hurt comment floated across the lake a ways before sinking into the lava. No one else would hear it, he knew. 

“Hey there, guy. You’re Eir- Eria- Eridan, right?” 

He whirled, startled, to see a human floating towards him, a broad smile on her (pretty sure it was a her) face. She was dressed in all blue, with the void symbol on her chest. Her hair was white, eyes a twinkling violet that reminded him of Feferi’s. Eridan looked her over again before responding, in a curt voice, “Yeah, I am. Wwho wwants to knoww?” 

She rolled her eyes a little at him and floated to his side, still smiling. She landed on the stone softly before responding, “I’m Roxy Lalonde. Nice ta meetcha, Eridan! We did a count of the trolls, and there was one missn- missin’. No one else wanted to go lookin’, but I thog- thought, ‘why not? Guy prolly got lost somewhere!’”

He found his mouth twitching into a small smile when she talked, but he forced it back into a frown as he turned to face the lava again. Her resemblance to Feferi intensified with the bright demeanor, but her speech, her voice, everything else—she was nothing like his former moirail, which was both a relief and… somehow not. “Yeah, wwell, I don’t knoww wwhere the fuck I am, so I guess lost is the right wword to fuckin’ use.”

She snorted, covering her mouth with one hand, and Eridan was struck with the feeling that he had met her before… no. Not her. Another Lalonde, the Rose girl. He felt angry just thinking about her, the way she had blown up his computer, refused his offer of kismesisude—

But for some reason, as the anger built, all it took was a simple “So, Eridan, where you headed? I can prolly take you whr- wherever you wanna go!” to dissipate it. 

He turned to her, taking a breath to tell her to fuck off (purely by habit), but as his eyes met hers he just let his breath out in a rush. At her expectant head tilt, he finally said, “I don’t havve anyplace to go to. My land wwas destroyed wwhen our session wwas fucked up.”

She hummed thoughtfully, floating a little too close and accidentally bumping into him before announcing, “Then you can stay with me! I can make a fort of these lil’ block things, and we can find your fronds, and then-”

Eridan cut her off, not meanly but firmly. “I don’t wwanna talk to the others. They despise me, and the feelin’s fuckin’ mutual.”

Roxy shrugged. “Ohkay. Then we can act like ninjas and avoid them or somethin’. But you need to lighten up a lil’ first, k?”

Her persistence made something inside of Eridan warm, a part that he though had wilted around the same time Fef had told him in no uncertain terms that she was done with him forever. He couldn’t stop the smile that blossomed across his face, and the “Alright, fine, let’s go” that came out of his mouth was free of the disdain he usually spoke to people with.   
And when Roxy scooped him up into a bridal carry, and he cursed and threatened and told her to put him down, she just laughed, easily ducking his arms as he flailed, and Eridan thought that maybe, just maybe, it could turn into something more.  
One thing was for sure: she wouldn't be another Feferi. He would make damn sure of that.


End file.
